


Winds of Change

by HermitLibrary_Archivist



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Angst, Gen, Season/Series 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-26
Updated: 2008-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HermitLibrary_Archivist/pseuds/HermitLibrary_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>by Alicia Ann Fox (oracne)</p><p>After "Rescue," Tarrant and Dayna mourn Cally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winds of Change

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Judith and Aralias, the archivists: This story was originally archived at [Hermit.org Blake's 7 Library](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Hermit_Library), which was closed due to maintenance costs and lack of time. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2015. We posted announcements about the move and emailed authors as we imported, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Hermit.org Blake's 7 Library collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hermitlibrary/profile). 
> 
> This work has been backdated to 26th of May 2008, which is the last date the Hermit.org archive was updated, not the date this fic was written. In some cases, fics can be dated more precisely by searching for the zine they were originally published in on [Fanlore](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page).
> 
> Previously Published in Perihelion

They no longer had Dayna's disintegrator pistol, so the body had to be burned. It would have been useless to carry a corpse up the nearly endless metal stairway of Xenon Base for surface burial.

Vila didn't want the job; Avon didn't particularly care. The task was left to Tarrant, and Dayna volunteered to help him.

Avon and Vila had gone back to work on the hangar doors by the time Dayna found more incendiary clips for Dorian's guns. Once again she and Tarrant ventured into the depths of the base, twisting along the stairway which spiraled through many levels before reaching the cave.

The young man's body still lay there, though all traces of Dorian had evaporated. Dayna knelt beside the corpse and carefully covered it with a throw blanket she'd found upstairs, a red one embroidered with gold thread.

Tarrant hefted his new weapon experimentally. "We're just going to burn that, Dayna," he commented. "Why bother? We don't even know who he was."

Sitting back on her heels, Dayna looked back over her shoulder at him. "Even the savages on Sarran have respect for the dead," she stated flatly. She turned back to the body and pulled the makeshift shroud over the youthful face. "And besides--" her voice caught "we can't bury Cally, so why not him?" Dayna's voice had hardened again by the end.

After a long anguished moment Tarrant replied, "I miss her, too."

Dayan rose slowly, staring down at the corpse. "It seems so long ago, now...." She drew her clip gun and rammed in the incendiary forcefully. "I can hardly believe that she's gone, but from the pit of my stomach, I know...." Stepping back to Tarrant's side, she pointed the gun at the body. Tarrant did the same.

"We consign this man to the nothingness from which he came," Tarrant said, and together they fired. Two brilliant white flashes ignited the shroud, momentarily blinding them in the cave's dim light. After a few moments, however, their eyes had adjusted, and they watched the rapid hungry flames in silence. There was little smoke; Tarrant realized that it was being sucked out by the ventilator system.

When the body had burned to ash and partially calcined bone, Dayna shielded her eyes and set the remains alight again, to completely incinerate them. "When Lauren and I were young," she said, "we would have pet rodents, and when they died and we buried them my father used to say, 'ashes to ashes and dust to dust'." She spoke softly to the flickering flames. "But I couldn't bury him--" She turned blindly into Tarrant's embrace. "We've lost so much, Tarrant! All of us."

"I'm sure Deeta had a state funeral," Tarrant said Wearily. "But it's no substitute for a brother, Dayna."

At long last the flames died away. Dayna pulled back from Tarrant and straightened her spine. "Servalan has paid. She's dead."

Tarrant sighed. "And so is Blake." He walked over to the foot of the stairs. "We'll have to do it ourselves, now. First thing, we get off this ball of dirt."

After a moment, Dayna nodded and decisively followed him.


End file.
